PNNL-13501 - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

thumb in a “gun” type configuration, and snapping the
thumb against the finger to cycle through limbs, stopping
when the appropriate body part is highlighted on the
screen. Once the body part is selected, the user simply
moves his or her hand in the camera’s view to move the
limb. This control mechanism has the advantage of being
natural and intuitive once a few basic gestures (such as
the selection gesture) are learned. It is also very flexible,
because the gestures that are used to control the avatar can
be easily and intuitively mapped to controlling other
objects in any virtual environment.
A significant disadvantage to this controller is that the
HI-space is the size of a table and has a ceiling-mounted
camera, an extremely inconvenient configuration.
Therefore, the final effort of this project will be to
develop a prototype Human-Information Workpad
(HI-PAD) as illustrated in Figure 3. This desktop device
incorporates a small camera mounted about 18 inches
above a nonreflective black pad. The user places his or
her hand on the pad and gesticulates with the fingers to
manipulate the avatar or other objects in the virtual
environment. This simple device, which incorporates the
gesture-tracking software already developed for the
HI-space, combines the natural gesture-based controls of
the HI-space environment with the convenience of being
mountable on a desktop and used in conjunction with a
traditional keyboard and/or mouse.
Figure 3. Illustration of the HI-PAD concept. The cone
indicates the field of view of the infrared camera mounted
above the hand pad.
166 FY 2000 Laboratory Directed Research and Development Annual Report
This research has applicability in a wide variety of
applications. Some of the most obvious arenas where
dynamic virtual environments and dynamic avatars would
be of value are the following.
Simulations and training
The ability to dynamically interact with a simulated
environment will enormously increase the flexibility and
versatility of a wide variety of simulation applications.
Although this effort used human-form avatars to illustrate
the flexibility and adaptability of the dynamic virtual
environment, the same properties could be applied to any
sort of virtual object. For instance, the avatar might be a
plane, in a flight simulation, or a tornado, in a disasterrecovery
scenario.
Modeling
To reiterate the discussion of simulations and modeling,
there is no reason to constrain the dynamic avatars to
human form. The collaborative, dynamic nature of the
avatars, combined with the infinite flexibility of scale
inherent to virtual worlds, will support a variety of
collaborative modeling applications.
Telemedicine
The ability to represent both physicians and patients in a
virtual environment could be superior to a real surgical
environment because medical images can be overlaid or
integrated with a representation of the entire patient.
Micro- and macro-level views can be simultaneously
available. Finally, physicians can use realistic physical
interaction and dynamic behavior in the virtual
environment to explore range-of-movement exercises
without risk.
Virtual command posts
This tool will enable commanders in distributed physical
locations to coordinate as efficiently as if they were
physically collocated.